The Warlocks are at the gate

I’m not a ‘wow cool – new classes/races’ type person. I don’t mind them, but I don’t even have a completionist so it’s not like I’ve grown bored of destroying everything with my triple completionist uber nuker.

Not that I’m complaining with what I have. But I don’t mind it; if there’s a class or race out there that’ll provide me with a new way of playing things I’m all for it. And I’m already clear on whom I want to use – in this case my hybrid caster – my spellsinger savant. The truth is that while it was a nice experiment with some okay synergies it’s dead in the water for upper end Epics. There’s simply not enough juice to boost high end spells and Shiradi procs, while nice, can’t sustain the type of DPS needed.

But first; with next update there will be a few updates to ToEE. Quite frankly they’re too late. Those changes were needed from getgo and now they’ll simply a little too late to the party. Again – increase in rare spawn rate, non mythic version of the named stuff and a slightly higher drop rate of the mythics. Bad idea all around. First – we don’t need more loot dilution. Keep the mythic aspect, increase the drop rate slightly and be done with it.

By adding a Epic version you’re not making the items more special. Just another BTA item you probably won’t use because most of the named items are meh, except for a few of them.

Second, increasing rare might help you get something out of the full run, but it’s still the same bloated HP bags and dreary waves of trash. Fundamentally Turbine is failing to provide the fun in ToEE unless you truly like slaying hundreds of creatures.

And to add – the shrines expire when you leave. So the ONE thing that made the entire dreadful nauseating experience slightly tolerable is removed. Quite honestly; I feel less interested in ToEE with every change than interested in it. And having gone through 3 patches (or whatever) plus now a second update to fix it tells you how terrible the experience have been for most players.

But – Warlock.

First and foremost – and it might sound negative but I don’t mean it as such – Warlocks are one trick pony’s.

They lack the diversity of spells of other casters and the main attack – the eldricht blast really doesn’t change a whole lot. That’s not saying it’s bad. After all the bow is the main attack of the ranger, weapon for melee and while casters cycle through a few more spells the selection generally falls into nuking spells for savants, CC for Wiz and insta killer for Pale Masters. The difference being of course that a Savant for example will cycle through a few more spells compared to the Warlock, but the pattern or the intent is about the same.

It is true – Warlocks get a few more spells dependent on pact. Some SLAs and some other regular spells. They also get a small selection of regular spells to provide some diversity. But it’s small, most of them are not different DPS spells and you still end up using the eldricht blast as the goto attack.

The only basic difference is the ‘additional’ damage of the blast. Such as altering additional damage based on pact. Or altering the type of damage from say force to piercing (untyped) or unholy etc. There’s also a matter of ‘shape’. Such as chain, cone shaped, aura shaped etc.

The blast itself is fairly slow; you’ll end up noticing that you miss a few shots in the process, particularly if you’re used to dancing in circles and blasting away. Here the chain is efficient.

The damage will top out at about 300-500 on crit for the main damage and about 200-400 for the secondary type (say acid). Add Shiradi effect to it and you got some okay proc damage, but less so in average considering that each blast is considered a single hit.

That’s not bad per say; but it is dreadful against high HP targets. If you play ToEE you’ll end up fighting bosses with 40-150k of HP. Hitting for 500 on crit and maybe 1.2k on Shiradi proc is a far cry from the multi thousand damage you’ll do with say a Savant. And considering that most critters walk around with about 4k worth of HP on EH it’ll be a tedious amount of blasting.

The secondary stuff isn’t all that inspiring. I did the tainted scholar tree thingy (I think that is what it’s called) and added mass confusion. Now the spell seemed interesting – having a whole mob be confused and either attack you or each others. However even if I managed to confuse most of the mob only about 20% fought the rest, most of the confused most still attacked you. So it was a waste of points in my book.

Thrall is better; it allows you to ‘dominate’ 1 monster for 30 seconds with a fairly high chance of doing so. More importantly it can be undead. I liked that feature since you made a guy a thrall and it immediately started taking agro from nearby units allowing you to control the situation.

Can I recommend Warlocks?

Yes – absolutely. But I don’t know how viable they’ll be in a boss situation or EE. Not that they’re bad. But the limited selection of DPS makes for a main attack that’s okay for creatures and less effective against high HP targets.

Warlocks are easy on your gear selection. 1 main boost to untyped/force damage and 1 additional boost for the additional damage. Pump everything into Evocation for most part or perhaps Enchantment for secondary disco balls and such. And then fire. Maximize con, Maximize Charisma.